A Sept. 25 e-mail from HealthCare.gov project manager Henry Chao,obtained exclusively by Fox News, suggests Obama administration officials had more fears than they let on publicly that the website would have problems before its Oct. 1 launch.

In the e-mail to a number of apparent colleagues, Chao suggests the administration should design a more palatable way to tell the public that the website was not working in case it failed after the launch, saying that such a move could help prevent the media from “just ramping up the hyperbole about hc.gov not [being] functional.”

***

Consumers can’t go to healthcare.gov to learn whether their doctors participate in an Obamacare-approved health care plan because the website doesn’t include such information.

That’s because federal officials were so eager to approve insurer health plans for the exchanges, they didn’t ask how many doctors, hospitals, labs and clinics were participating in each plan, according to a key health insurance industry trade association executive…

Howard described Obamacare’s reduced reimbursement levels as “Medicaid Lite” because, he said, the program’s reimbursement rates are somewhere between Medicare and Medicaid levels.

“The structure is to really try to keep premiums down as much so you can to get that sweet spot with these essential health benefits,” Howard said.

More importantly, these physicians are finding that their patients are being forced out of the insurance plans they have, because Jay Carney and Zeke Emmanuel have deemed them “substandard.” Some of the doctors said they will try to continue caring for their patients even after the insurance runs out, others said they just can’t afford to give away free care.

Obamacare is no answer. The health plans in the exchanges are using “skinny networks” to save money. That means no payment if a patient goes to an “out-of-network” provider, and in many cases only a third of an area’s physicians and hospitals are in the network. Naturally, these are the cheapest and worst providers in the region. The Anthem plan in Maine, one of only two choices in that state, will make no payment for any out-of-state provider, even though most patients with serious conditions in Maine go to Boston for treatment…

I had to tell these physicians that I see no way out. The politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests have destroyed what was a reasonably effective health care system.

The next round of cancellations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses. While the administration has tried to downplay the cancellation notices hitting policyholders on the individual market by noting they represent a relatively small fraction of the population, the swath of people who will be affected by the shakeup in employer-sponsored coverage will be much broader…

For workers, their experience could mirror that of the 5 million or so on the individual market who already received cancellation notices because their plans did not meet new standards under the Affordable Care Act.

* Their mismanagement raised questions about competence, compounded by deceptive and tone-deaf responses that undermined their credibility.
* The crises came after a series of unrelated events that had already caused doubt among voters about the presidents. To borrow a cliché, Katrina was the last straw.
* Their personal and job-approval ratings tanked.
* Their dwindling political capital was squandered by defensive, insular advisers who refused to recognize the dangers.
* They both ran reelection campaigns without a positive forward-looking message and made the races primarily about their opponent. That left them little political capital going into their second term.

Bush never recovered. Obama might still have time to learn history’s hard lessons.

***

“The redistributive arithmetic of Obamacare’s architecture could never add up,” Steven Hayward, a visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at the University of Colorado, wrote in Forbes magazine: “The wonder is that Obama’s political team didn’t see this coming and prepare a pre-emptive strategy for dealing with the inevitable exposure of the duplicity at the heart of Obamacare’s logic.”…

The industry sets rates three months in advance of each year. The rates for 2014 were set last month. If the industry is forced in 2014 to accept smaller profits, or actual losses, because of a government-mandated requirement to continue current policies, it will attempt to make up for lost revenue in 2015 by raising premiums. Providing temporary relief may create an even more severe problem in October 2014 with an election looming…

Obama has placed himself and his party in what now looks like a zero-sum bind, forcing a choice between inflicting the painful consequences of Obamacare on the electorate now or 11 months from now.

***

“But it’s such a small minority” is the administration’s rejoinder; the entire individual market covers just 5 percent of the population, and some of those people will be net beneficiaries of Obamacare, thanks to the subsidies. This logic was always a bit shaky — all the people who are ultimately expected to get additional coverage from the new law, including the Medicaid expansion, amount to only 7.5 percent of the population, so if 5 percent is too small to worry about, then probably so is the number of uninsured. But it’s not even true. I mean, it’s true that only 5 percent of the population gets its coverage from the individual market. But Obamacare is also making significant changes in the employer market. Twelve percent of workers are expected to be affected by the “Cadillac tax” on especially generous health-care benefits when it kicks in in 2018. When those people find out that they too will be in the group of people who can’t keep their plan, even though they like it, they will be livid. The unions, who will be disproportionately affected by this, are already getting restive.

To be clear, I still don’t think that repeal is probable. But I do think it’s possible, and getting somewhat more likely, though not under Obama’s presidency. Having two outlets talk about this as more than a Republican pipe dream tells you that people are starting to think that this is actually possible. And that by itself makes it more likely to happen. Not all at once, the way the Republican Party dreamed. But it might be dismembered in pieces, until there’s no reason not to repeal what’s left of the desiccated corpse…

The moment that it looks like there’s a big risk that Obamacare won’t work, both Democrats and insurers are going to stampede for the exit. Yes, Obama can veto anything that threatens his favorite law. But if it gets that far, he’s already lost. His veto will cost his party big in the 2014 midterms, quite possibly enough to cost them the Senate. But by then it will probably be irrelevant, because if Obama has to veto something like a bipartisan bill to delay or repeal the individual mandate, his presidency will be over, and his signature legislation will be in grave danger. Insurers were willing to risk fairly substantial losses in 2014 to help the law get established and build market share. If it looks like the law is going to fail, they probably aren’t going to be willing to do it again in 2015.

Blowback

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since QOTD is an open thread: awww nothing today about Illinois legalizing gay marriage? Or right-wing hero Zimmerman losing his guns? or states like Wisconsin making it harder for minorities to vote early? Trying to suppress the old white bigots that make up your base now that you think you have a winning message w/ the ACA rollout mishaps? why else would you kill that obvious link bait for 10000 obamacare stories averaging 60 comments each? hmmmm

A top tech official for the ObamaCare exchanges said just days before the launch of the troubled health law website that people inside the White House were nervous the site would be unavailable after its launch and would be a big embarrassment,

Looks like they chose to have a “big embarassment” rather than present Him with bad news. He don’t like no bad news.

Support for President Obama’s health care law has dropped 16 points in the past month — and that’s just among Democrats.

The finding, from a CBS News poll, is one of several startling numbers from polls released in recent days showing rapidly eroding public support for Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment in the wake of its botched rollout. [...]

With the 2014 midterm elections now in the horizon, what’s most striking is how closely Obamacare polling is starting to resemble polling on Iraq in fall 2006, when a public backlash against the war enabled the Democrats to take over control of both chambers of Congress.

A Gallup poll taken days before the Nov. 7, 2006, election found that 55 percent of Americans had come to view sending troops to Iraq as a mistake, compared to 40 percent who said it was not.

Yet in the CBS News poll released Wednesday, 61 percent of Americans were found to disapprove of Obamacare, compared to 31 percent who approve. In the Washington Post poll, the numbers were 57 percent to 40 percent.

since QOTD is an open thread: awww nothing today about Illinois legalizing gay marriage? Or right-wing hero Zimmerman losing his guns? or states like Wisconsin making it harder for minorities to vote early? Trying to suppress the old white bigots that make up your base now that you think you have a winning message w/ the ACA rollout mishaps? why else would you kill that obvious link bait for 10000 obamacare stories averaging 60 comments each? hmmmm

DBear on November 20, 2013 at 10:46 PM

Nah. We’ll stick to what’s important to the 311 million, not just what’s important to douchebags like you.
But, nice try. If it was working, well, we all knew it would crater and fail. Just like Obama.

A top tech official for the ObamaCare exchanges said just days before the launch of the troubled health law website that people inside the White House were nervous the site would be unavailable after its launch and would be a big embarrassment, Fox News has learned.

since QOTD is an open thread: awww nothing today about Illinois legalizing gay marriage? Or right-wing hero Zimmerman losing his guns? or states like Wisconsin making it harder for minorities to vote early? Trying to suppress the old white bigots that make up your base now that you think you have a winning message w/ the ACA rollout mishaps? why else would you kill that obvious link bait for 10000 obamacare stories averaging 60 comments each? hmmmm

DBear on November 20, 2013 at 10:46 PM

No, I think watching your entire parasitic way of life go down in flames is more important.

I had to tell these physicians that I see no way out. The politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests have destroyed what was a reasonably effective health care system.

what no “mission accomplished” barry…flags and a band. You Won!

i wish i had more confidence in the RINO party…the progressive side of the party is so bought that they will just do what their donors tell them to…so if the insurance and pharma pony up the cash, the RINOs will be all in, and they’ll just pass some brain dead bill like the Upton lightbulb ban ‘delay’ bill. I.e. cash in your donor checks.

when that cash comes in, they’ll fold like a cheap suit…there’s money to be made in a third world country

Who cares? Definitely not Obama. He will never repeal the law even if 99% of Americans call for it to get repealed.

He is never going to run again so why should he care? Anyway I think the GOP is doing what it does best which is over reaching. They would have way more credibility if they were to use this opportunity to outline a more cohesive health care plan. Instead they spend their time demonizing a law most Americans want fixed rather than repealed.

Who cares? Definitely not Obama. He will never repeal the law even if 99% of Americans call for it to get repealed.

loveofcountry on November 20, 2013 at 10:59 PM

If the heat gets hot enough, it won’t matter what Obama wants. While still unlikely, but odds getting better everyday, is the possibility of DEMOCRATS joining in a bipartisan override of Obama’s veto. The Clinton Machine will swing into action because polls already show the Obamacare debacle hurting Hillary. Hell, Lanny Davis called for repeal this evening.

Well, actually he said ‘reset,’ which is ironic because OVERCHARGE describes Obamacare to a ‘t’.

Connie Mack is a RINO member of a Florida political dynasty and with family ties to a couple of old Texas political dynasties (Sheppard & Connally). He also seems to have quite a temper problem. He elbowed his way into the Florida primaries and it was obvious there was political arm-twisting going on to get more conservative candidates to drop out. Upon being nominated he lost to Bill Nelson.

The moment that it looks like there’s a big risk that Obamacare won’t work, both Democrats and insurers are going to stampede for the exit. Yes, Obama can veto anything that threatens his favorite law. But if it gets that far, he’s already lost. His veto will cost his party big in the 2014 midterms, quite possibly enough to cost them the Senate. But by then it will probably be irrelevant, because if Obama has to veto something like a bipartisan bill to delay or repeal the individual mandate, his presidency will be over, and his signature legislation will be in grave danger. Insurers were willing to risk fairly substantial losses in 2014 to help the law get established and build market share. If it looks like the law is going to fail, they probably aren’t going to be willing to do it again in 2015.

I absolutely LOVE this. Check mate, jackass.
I just hope the pressure, the failure, the rats jumping off the sinking ship cause obama to lose his cool and show everyone what he really is…then, I will want hump bot to celebrate the end of this national nightmare.

I saw the tagline on the front page and thought of that “international organization of evil.”

INC on November 20, 2013 at 10:56 PM

.
Dayyum! I missed that… but still, that is the Øbama government experience and plan. As long as he can screw things up for everybody and then pretend to offer “solutions” he seems cool and analytical while everybody else is running around with hair on fire.
.
International Organization of Evil works, too… although I haven’t figured out how to work into OfA. Organization for Anti-Christ, maybe.

When Obama, unilaterally, delayed the employer mandate, the House passed a bill that would give him that authority since the law doesn’t grant it to him. Obama said that he would veto it. The same is true for the Upton bill.

It’s not just the House. Senators Landrieu, Manchin, Udall, Shaheen, and Begich each have introduced separate legislative ‘fixes’ or are in the process of doing so. All of them are Democrats. Harry Reid has refused to allow a vote on any of them and has no plans, at this time, to do so.

Obama claims that Congress refuses to help him ‘fix’ Obamacare, but the real dirty little secret is this: The LAST thing that Obama wants is for Obamacare to be back in Congress where it will be opened up to all sorts of changes. Even if he lacks the authority and his acts are clearly unlawful (see the decision to read the law to permit Federal subsidies to be granted to applicants in states that did not create their own exchanges – the ACA ONLY permits subsidation in STATE-RUN exchanges), Obama would prefer to act unilaterally than let Congress (and Congress, my LIV friends, includes the Senate) start fooling around with his signature achievement.

Chao suggests the administration should design a more palatable way to tell the public that the website was not working in case it failed after the launch,
Why ?
Threatening people with a giant gavel and calling them racists does not work anymore?

The Anthem plan in Maine, one of only two choices in that state, will make no payment for any out-of-state provider, even though most patients with serious conditions in Maine go to Boston for treatment…

Same “free market” that’s constantly denying coverage after collecting all my premiums? Same free market that wrote Obamacare? Same free market that has earmarked millions of dollars to promote the health care exchanges once the website is fixed? Same free market eager to force all Americans into buying health care insurance? That “free market”? No it doesn’t satisfy me.

A fascinating number in Wednesday’s CBS poll is that only 7% of the American public want ObamaCare “kept in place.” A full 93% either believe that changes are needed to the law (48%) or want a full repeal (43%). This pits President Obama and Democrat lawmakers — who thus far have refused to make any meaningful changes — against 93% of the American people and 72% of Democrats.

Who cares? Definitely not Obama. He will never repeal the law even if 99% of Americans call for it to get repealed.

He is never going to run again so why should he care? Anyway I think the GOP is doing what it does best which is over reaching. They would have way more credibility if they were to use this opportunity to outline a more cohesive health care plan. Instead they spend their time demonizing a law most Americans want fixed rather than repealed.

loveofcountry on November 20, 2013 at 10:59 PM

And, I’m sure Harry Reid would be all about putting your cohesive health care on the senate floor for a vote. The law is imploding, giving it a little kick is no big deal.

Uhh, a few reasons… First, it has no bearing on his shooting a feral, drug-addled, criminally inclined teenager. Second, it has no bearing on my right to carry a gun. Third, his girlfriend and her mother have been shopping around for a payday from a national new station interview, but apparently, no one is interested in paying them.

Since Del isn’t around to issue a grade, I’ll be the substitute teacher: D-

(Passing grade only because you did do what you are paid to do, that is, try to distract the readership from ClusterSharknadoF*ckCare™.

Same “free market” that’s constantly denying coverage after collecting all my premiums? Same free market that wrote Obamacare? Same free market that has earmarked millions of dollars to promote the health care exchanges once the website is fixed? Same free market eager to force all Americans into buying health care insurance? That “free market”? No it doesn’t satisfy me.

loveofcountry on November 20, 2013 at 11:12 PM

Did you read that contract you signed? Says right there, they will not pay for a sex change!
No one is saying obamacare is free market, pal.